White House acts to stem fallout from Trump’s first Charlottesville remarks

President Trump condemns violence “on many sides” after Saturday’s attack on a crowd protesting white nationalists.

Photo: AL DRAGO, NYT

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — The White House, under siege over President Trump’s equivocal response to this weekend’s bloody white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, Va., on Sunday condemned “white supremacists” for inciting the violence that led to one death.

The statement — issued more than 36 hours after the protests began — came in an email sent to reporters in the president’s traveling press pool, and it was attributed to an unnamed spokesperson. It was not attributed directly to Trump, who often uses Twitter to communicate directly on controversial topics.

The Associated Press reported that President Trump says he’s planning a news conference Monday in Washington — though it’s unclear what he plans to discuss.

The statement Sunday was sent “in response” to questions about Trump’s widely criticized remarks, in which he blamed the unrest “on many sides” while speaking on Saturday before an event for military veterans at his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., where the president is on vacation.

The criticism of Trump intensified Sunday, with lawmakers from both parties calling on him to explicitly condemn the role of white racists and agitators affiliated with the “alt-right” white nationalist movement, some of whom brandished pro-Trump banners and campaign placards during violent protests over the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a Charlottesville park.

“The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred. Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together,” the White House statement on Sunday said.

Trump will continue to receive regular updates from his team, according to the official to whom the statement was attributed, and Thomas Bossert, the White House homeland security adviser, was in Bedminster monitoring the situation.

Bossert praised the statement the president made Saturday — which denounced the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” — saying that Trump had appropriately criticized an event that “turned into an unacceptable level of violence at all levels.”